Aston Villa just announced signing John Terry in a very unique way

Your uncle’s favourite footballer has found a new club after ending his spell at Chelsea with a mid-match guard of honour back in May, signing a one-year deal with the Championship side.

When he makes his debut, it will be the first time he has played for a club other than Chelsea since a loan spell with Nottingham Forest back in 2000.

But thankfully his new employers have taken some of the pressure off by finding a unique way to announce the signing.

So far this summer we’ve seen Arsenal mark the arrival of Sead Kolašinac with an acrostic…

We’ve seen Mohamed Salah’s move to Liverpool made official with some Twitter scrolling…

And as for Roma’s move for Lorenzo Pellegrini, well…

It felt as if there was nothing left for Villa to do that hadn’t already been done, but owner Dr Tony Xia is a smart cookie.

So smart, in fact, that he made sure to leave his display name as ‘Dr Tony Xia’ in this WhatsApp mock-up to make sure everyone remembers his qualification.

We’re picturing all the dads watching this, tutting at their screen and pining for the days when teams just did things normally with a presentation at the stadium.

“Why is it always WhatsApps this and Snapchats that,” they wonder aloud, speaking in plurals like only a man with a diet of Paul Merson quotes and pints of Spitfire can.

Well, we’re here to tell you Villa’s announcement is actually good.

They’ve gone to real effort to welcome in their new man, even doing research on his preferred squad number and pre-empting which player will have to change shirt for the forthcoming season.

They’ve thrown in references to other greats in Terry’s preferred position just so they can insert a joke about anthropomorphic beard Olof Mellberg being a diva, and they’ve made a joke at Gabby Agbonlahor’s expense that he probably didn’t even realise was a joke until reading this article.